Paul Scholes and Nicky Butt recently revealed on the podcast The Good, The Bad & The Football that the dressing rooms of some Champions League giants were absolutely disgusting.
Scholes and Nicky Butt were part of the squad that won the top European trophy in 1999. The Red Devils faced Barcelona, Bayern Munich and other teams in the group stage, and travelled to Italy in the knockout rounds. They eliminated Inter Milan and Juventus in turn before beating Bayern in the final to lift the trophy. However, their trips to Spain and Italy were not as luxurious and glamorous as many would have expected.
The 51-year-old Butt prefers new stadiums with underfloor heating and heated seats, saying such conditions “make football so much easier”. But on the podcast, he and Scholes spoke frankly about their terrible impressions of the facilities at Barcelona and Juventus. Scholes described Barcelona’s Camp Nou dressing room as a “rubbish tip”, while Butt compared the facilities at Juventus’ Stadio delle Alpi to scenes from the 1981 film Escape to Victory. Butt explained that Juventus’ dressing room was “all concrete”, and Scholes said Barcelona’s dressing room was “simply terrible”.
In recent years, both Juventus and Barcelona have upgraded their stadiums. Juventus demolished the 69,000-seat Stadio delle Alpi in 2009 and built the more modern 41,689-seat Juventus Stadium on the same site. Barcelona has completed a £1.25 billion renovation of Camp Nou, expanding capacity from 99,354 to 105,000. The upgrade includes brand-new, state-of-the-art home and away dressing rooms with integrated TV screens for tactical briefings and modern bathing areas.
In addition, Scholes and Nicky Butt also criticised English clubs, giving extremely low ratings to the facilities at teams including Barnsley and Sheffield Wednesday. Even the dressing room at Premier League side Newcastle United failed to impress them, and was described as “dreadful”.
